The All-Or-Nothing Academic Lifestyle

To be a teacher is to live the binge all-or-nothing lifestyle of the student forever. Your calendar is the academic one. You either have final exams and are overwhelmed. Or you have the summer off with little or nothing to do.

And I have been doing this for 28 years. Most do the academic lifestyle as college students and then move on. I have stayed my entire adult life.

There are pros and cons to this lifestyle, and I have long since accepted the tradeoffs. No regrets.

But now I am in the middle of the overwhelmed portion of the year. I teach all day long which is exhausting, and then after school I coach tennis matches with my high school team versus other schools. Twice a week I have team tennis matches, and in the “away” competitions I have to drive my team in a school van to Santa Barbara from Ventura and back. The team goes to dinner (the “In and Out” restaurant is a popular destination) and drives home. I left my house at 7:50 in the morning yesterday and returned home at 8:20 at night. I was exhausted.  On the days when we don’t have matches, we have tennis practice. Yikes. It is almost like having two jobs.

But I know that the tennis season will be over in six weeks.

Things will calm down then. My calendar will relent. I will have only one job: teaching. No coaching until next fall.

“Hang in there, Richard.”

“It’s almost over.”

The girls on my tennis team sing Taylor Swift songs in the van as I drive back and forth to competitions. They talk about boys and school and teachers and whatever. I can clearly see them enjoying the benefits of team sports with respect to social support and physical movement – the camaraderie and exercise, both equally important, as I see it. I witness my daughter glowing with contentment surrounded by her teammates, and I am more than willing to coach this team and three others to help her to get it. It is the opposite of my daughter during the Covid  pandemic: her club soccer team finally going defunct because of societal shutdowns, and her sitting alone on her bed on her iPhone. The high school tennis team is the opposite of that. I am happy to help her get that by coaching the team.

But I am overwhelmed.

Piles of essays to be graded. Classes everyday to teach. College letters of recommendation to write. One daughter almost 16-years old. Another almost 13-years old. A wife. All my hobbies. The high school tennis team. My own USTA tennis team. House, yard. Unexpected issues come up, as always. Bills arrive in the mail I didn’t expect. Adult life. Worries. Responsibilities.

But that won’t last forever. As I age, it changes. It gets easier.

I see new parents in their mid 30s or early 40s, and I recognize myself a decade or two ago. Their shiny new marriages. The infant child in diapers. A certain time of life full of challenge and excitement. But I’m a decade and half older than these parents. I’m 55-years old.

And I am on the down slope of parenting compared to these shiny new parents. I am happy for them in this exciting stage of their lives, and I also feel sorry for them: there will be long years of arduous labor in raising young children who will later become tweens and then full teenagers. Then college and all the money involved.

It is a long road. The costs are enormous. But the payoff can also be enormous (on a good day, that is).

And what else are you going to do with your time, if not parenting?

The average adult without children seems to find less purpose and direction in their lives, in my experience. They drift. They struggle, too. Why do they wake up every morning and get out of bed? Are they bored? Do their lives have a point? Over the years the answers to these questions can change. But they become only more important, in my opinion.

And it is not only with the childless that life changes. The adults with children can find their values and priorities changing away from money and ambition and towards caring and family as they age. I have noticed many a highly-educated woman sacrifice her career ambitions, more or less, on the altar of motherhood. I have seen them come to this realization: motherhood is more fulfilling and important to them than is working for money. I understand completely. I might not have understood when I was 35. But I do now at 55. I value being a father much more than I do being a worker. It is more important. There is no question.

Of course, like so many things in life, it is not an all-or-nothing proposition. One has to negotiate and find the “sweet spot” between being overwhelmed and not having enough to do. Between making tons of money but being sucked dry by your employer, and having plenty of time but not enough money for you and yours because you don’t work enough. (Or worse, working all the time and still not having enough money.) Between taking care of all the needs of your children and having no life of your own, and being self-indulgent while your children might be neglected. It is hard to find the Goldilocks Zone of “just right.” One has to continually adjust and adapt. It is not easy.

Six more years, Richard. Six more years.

In six more years your youngest daughter will graduate high school and leave for college. 

Your pension will be fully funded. You can retire.

It could be worse.

You chose this life for yourself, Richard. Nobody forced you.

In six years you can look back at this posting and see how the years passed quickly.

Because it does not seem quick right now.

Yet the past six years have gone by quickly.

Or have they?

Maybe the months they fly by, but the days they can be long and exhausting. It seems overwhelming at the moment.

When I was in elementary school, six years was an eternity. Now it is not.

Six years more. You got this.

Stay the course, Richard.

Steady as she goes, captain.

Or we can switch from piloting a ship to the metaphor of running a race. Remember the lessons of cross country in your youth: stoic patience, pain tolerance, and mental toughness. Focusing your mind sufficiently on a task allows the body to overcome almost anything. Discipline gets you across the finish line.

Discipline, Richard.

Six more weeks in the high school tennis season.

And then it will get easier.

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Six More Years to Go